Windows 7 Student Upgrade version on a new system

Hello there, my wife is a student and has access to a cheap version of windows 7 upgrade edition, now I have heard various things about using the upgrade version for a clean install from that its easily doable to that their are problems and you need to registry hack or do double installs, so whats the deal?

Also not sure on the legality of it but my mother in law has an upgrade version that she used to upgrade from vista to windows 7, she has since then got a full copy and offered to give us the upgrade version, would the activation code still be valid and would it be ok in the eyes of the law?

Depends on how the upgrade disc is made and what pre-requirements it has. WinXP upgrade I got some years ago required I had working 2k/98 system up and running, but I used nLite to turn the downloaded upgrade pack into bootable disc. The disc worked perfectly well and installed into clean computer since I wanted to format the disc instead of installing any dualboots or keeping the old 98 hanging around. I think that Vista/7 upgrades comes as bootable disc but you might need to enter your old cd key also along with the new one to verify you have old Windows too.

Software companies like to pretend that licenses cant be resold, and that EULA trumps over customers' rights, but both are legally in very gray area. There aren't many precedents anywhere in the world or law set in stone that says if you can or can't use upgrade disc somebody else bought. As long as your mother-in-law has removed the Windows installation from her computer, you should be able to use the disc and key for your computer 100% legally and without any problems whatsoever. You could even download the Windows installation DVD from your favourite torrent site and ask the CD key by phone from the inlaws without bothering to visit there for the disc if your relatives-quota is full from holiday season.

Never going to log into this garbage forum again as long as calling obvious troll obvious troll is the easiest way to get banned.
Trolling should be.

They should have at least came with a restore disc of some sort. But that's the thing with the upgrade version, if you cannot somehow get one working, you are not technically entitled to install although I'm sure most people go ahead and do it anyways

The upgrade license requires that you currently have on your PC a licensed version of the software that is eligible for the upgrade (i.e., previous versions of Windows XP or Windows Vista). Upon upgrade, the Windows 7 license terms will take the place of the agreement for the software you upgraded from. After you upgrade, you may no longer use the software you upgraded from.

Just don't boot from the CD, launch it from inside the XP/Vista installation, but pick clean install.

It's actually much MUCH easier than all that. Just pop in your 7 disc at bootup and tell it to do a clean install. When it asks you for your keycode don't put it in. It will then ask you what version OS you bought and after the install is done right click on "Computer" and click "properties". At the bottom of the new windows will be a link to activate and change your keycode. Viola!

The sole requirement of an 'Upgrade Installation' is that the computer has gone through a 'genuine Microsoft' validation with a previous operating system. You can do this just fine with an XP key, or a Vista key. If the system is a legitimate one, it will have done this already multiple times by now.

It is perfectly fine however to completely wipe the hard drive, or hell, change hard drive, between the old Windows installation and the new one. A clean installation is doable just fine.

Do be aware that if you are using a pirated version of an old operating system, you will most likely not have done this (and be unable to do so) and your computer is ineligible for upgrade. You will get an error that your key is not valid for your current system when you attempt to validate your Windows 7 Upgrade key online.

I bought the student edition and it installed just fine. Did it as a clean install, had Vista installed from the manufacturer when I bought the laptop, bought the student upgrade edition, popped the upgrade CD in, chose Custom Installation. From there it is easy to do a clean install, you will just get a folder called Windows.OLD that has the old files but you can delete that once the installation is complete.

You are probably safe to reinstall your copy or vista or xp if they were retail copies and not bundled oem versions

My versions of xp and vista are oem version, I do not have any windows OS cd/dvds and my restore cds were created myself from the prompts to do so when I booted my machines for the first time, I did a bit of googling and it looks like I cannot use those restore discs to install those OS on other machines so looks like I will be doing a virgin install with W7 upgrade disc and hoping it works or if not doing a double install and activating after its all installed and updated.